


I Give You My Word

by SparkedSynapse



Category: inFAMOUS (Video Games), inFAMOUS: Second Son
Genre: Phrasemancy, Power of Words, Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4102561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparkedSynapse/pseuds/SparkedSynapse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The DUP is called in to restrain a Bio-Terrorist near a library... And the situation goes hopelessly wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Give You My Word

“What kinda Bio-Terrorist hangs out near a library?”

“If he’s near a library, he has reason to be. Stay on your guard and be careful. Just like every other time. None of the strays we pick up have got any training, so this one should be as easy as the rest.”

The two APCs pulled up to the library’s entrance. Department of Unified Protection personnel poured out both, wearing their tell-tale grey and yellow armor. Armed to the teeth with the very customizable AR-15 assault rifle, twelve troopers prepped to clear the library.

Raised murmurs reached their ears, but by now the unit was so used to drawing civilian attention when it came to flushing out conduits, that they no longer cared.  
Three DUP troopers stacked up on each side of the library’s front door, while the other six wrapped around to the back of the building - making for the rear entrance.

When everyone was in position, the rear entrance group radio’d “Light breach and clear in five.”

Team leader for the front entrance group silently raised a hand to count five seconds with fingers.

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

There were no explosives necessary, these doors weren’t locked and were made of beautiful wood. Both groups moved into the building effortlessly, checking corners and scanning for possible threats.

Squad leader, loudly, “We ask any and all civilians to please vacate the area until the bio-terrorist threat has been dealt with. The Department of Unified Protection thanks you for your cooperation.”

One by one, and then in droves, all of the readers at the library packed up their belongings and made their way to either the back or front entrance.  
On their way out, each and every citizen was quickly scanned by the DUP, not slowing.

Each and every citizen, except for one, who didn’t budge.

“Sir,” squad leader spoke, “Please leave the area, you are interfering with a bio-terrorist capture operation.”

The boy, in black shirt and dark blue jeans sat in the armchair, with one shoe-covered foot pressing firmly against the ground, and the other leg crossing over his knee.

“You know,” he said to the DUP troopers, who were closing in. “It’s quite rude to interrupt someone when he’s reading.”

“Give me the scanner,” squad leader called out, and one of his men shoved the field-reader for the Conduit gene into his hands. He brought it up to the boy’s face, pulled the trigger and rhythmic beeping filled the library, echoing off its walls.

“Bio-Terrorist! Under the Revised Act for Citizen Protection from Empowered Humans, you are under arrest and to be transported to Curdun Cay. Rise from the chair, get on the ground on your knees with your hands behind your head.”

“Just give me a moment, buddy,” the boy mumbled absent-mindedly.

“Bio-Terrorist, this is your final warning!”

“I juuuust want to finish reading this paragraph...”

“Target is uncooperative, authorized for immediate takedown.”

The boy suddenly threw the book into the air, thrusting a hand in its general direction. While quivering in its ascent, the tome spat black ink and letters. They all spiraled toward the boy’s outstretched arm and tattooed themselves on his skin, wrapping around and around like barbed wire.

He made the same hand into a claw and thrust it toward the first DUP trooper whose gun was raised at him. A strange voice screamed “Begone!” It was deeper than the boy’s, somehow different. A volley of black letters shot out and slammed into the trooper’s helmet, into his vest and all over his body. The man began twitching, seizing as he fell backwards with his gun tumbling out of his hands. The boy sprinted away, turning a corner and vanishing behind a book-case. Indiscernible speech and chanting followed the boy, as the noises of book after book falling off the shelves reached the DUP team’s ears. Their pages leafed around before hitting the floor.

“Trooper down, rear team, prioritize capture of Bio-Terrorist! Conventional weapons authorized, attack and restrain at will! Front team will see to our fallen man.”

They took off their ally’s armor and helmet, also removing his shirt so they could take a look at the damage sustained. What they saw on his skin in bold black, capitalized type was a single word.

OPPRESSOR.

While administering aid to the wounded soldier, the front group heard the sounds of gunfire and screams, mixed with more strange chanting and a yelled word or two.

“Worship!”

“Cease!”

“Yield!”

“Submit!”

All of them screamed in the same eerie voice that boomed out of the conduit’s hand with his first attack.

“You tend to him, the rest of you, come with me.”

Three others followed the front squad’s leader to the back of the library where the sounds of struggle had originated from. Reaching the battleground, they saw only the remains of their former comrades. All six had been taken down. Some of them were still breathing.

“Check injuries but prioritize target’s capture,” the squad leader called out.

As they did, removing more clothing from their allies, they were faced with more words punched, stamped into all six of them.

LIAR. ATTACK-DOG. TORMENTOR. SADIST. BRUTE. JAILER.

“Blackout!” the frightening voice boomed again. The entire building’s electricity cut out, blanketing the group of four DUP troopers in darkness.

“Switch to thermal vision,” said the leader.

All followed his command.

“Cold!” the voice boomed, startling two of them.

“Hey uh, what- what does that mean?” one nervously asked.

“We don’t know, just keep an eye out constantly.”

“H-Hey uh, if we’re near the door, isn’t that where he’ll attack? Shouldn’t we move out of the way a bit?”

“Moron, that’s the point. We’re not letting him escape.”

“Sir, with all due respect, this mission is already a-”

The voice boomed again, “SILENCE!” and interrupted the one who was speaking, sweeping him off his feet and slamming him into a bookcase. He bounced off, suffering whiplash and crumpled to a prone position on the floor. Books from the shaken case rained over his body.

“Forget about him, focus on the target,” the leader assured, but his voice had begun to waver.

Another voice from the darkness called out, laughing, “The more you speak, the more I steal from you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?! You damn bio-ter-” he kept speaking, but no sound, no words came out. His vocal chords were being stressed in the right places, but nothing he spoke could actually be heard.

“Mmm, tasty,” the boy claimed again, laughing once more.

“Stop talking, he’s stealing whatever words we-!”

“Aaaaand I’ll take those toooo!”

The three of them looked around with their thermal goggles, not seeing anything. One of them gazed at the top of a bookcase he thought the conduit’s voice might’ve come from, and suddenly felt a sharp piercing pain stabbing through his armor, his chest, and erupting out of his back.

He spat blood onto the floor and the blade was withdrawn from him. The feeling of running footsteps pounded along the carpet and the assassin jumped away again. Before everything went black for the trooper he heard the sounds of gunfire. Then they faded. For a moment before consciousness pulled away, he didn’t know whether that was because they’d stopped firing or because they’d both been killed.

“Aah!” came a cry for help, and the leader whipped around, removing his thermal goggles to a nightmarish sight. A rope-like string of letters came down from the ceiling and wrapped themselves around the throat and neck of his buddy. Choking and sputtering, coughing sounds filled the leader’s ears as his fingers struggled to remove the words from his ally. They were just ink and blackness, with no paper to sit on, yet they were as material and real in physical space as anything else. Only once the man stopped kicking did the leader manage to see that the rope was made of the same word repeated over and over with no spaces.

NOOSENOOSENOOSENOOSENOOSENOOSENOOSENOOSENOOSENOOSE.

“He’s over here!” came a cry from the other side of the building. That was where the first one downed, and the one who tended to him - the only man he had left - were located. The leader immediately ran that way, and saw his soldier shooting the conduit, actually landing bullets on target.

Instead of bleeding, ink sprayed out of the retreating boy’s wounds, single letters and characters in different languages falling out as well. Each letter, as it tumbled down released black, inky mist and steam.

It wasn’t enough firepower to bring him down, and the boy dashed out of the library’s open front door. The soldier charged after him, even as the squad leader roared, “Get back! Don’t chase him!”

He saw his last man standing under a falling shadow. The conduit landed on him. A massive word coming out of his fist like a blade slammed down into his body with a flesh-piercing stab.

“Nooo!”

The boy kept running even as the leader fired a few more shots at him. “You fucking bastard!” He managed to run up to where his last soldier had died, and collapsed to his knees, breathless. The word KNIFE was sticking out of the man’s still-warm corpse.

He looked into the distance, seeing the boy’s arm tossing letter after letter onto a short building’s wall. The word bulged out of the wall as if it were metal decorations bolted onto its brickwork. Vertically, it spelt LADDER. The boy ran up the wall to grab the bottom of the L, then jumped ever higher to use the middle horizontal stroke of the A as another rung, stepping on the bottom of the A’s foot as he moved higher up. Like so, he climbed until he reached the roof.  
The leader, defeated and crushed, looked at the ground again and saw a book he hadn’t noticed before. It was opened to the last page. He picked it up with shaking hands and wide-eyes, reading out loud.

“The DUP team leader... Followed the boy until the conduit was cornered... No one ever found the squad leader’s body...” He tossed his rifle to the ground and removed his armor to scratch at his itchy chest. Exhausted, he narrowed his eyes when his fingernails seemed to move across liquid on his skin. Looking down, the squad leader almost fainted when he saw the word on his chest.

MESSENGER.


End file.
